B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (162 page)

Some fans have suggested that Travers is senile or confused, but in the story he’s clearly the opposite. All things considered, he’s sharp-witted and in command of the facts. The maps of the London Underground that we see render the network as it was in 1968, and don’t show the Victoria or Jubilee lines, which opened on 7th March, 1969, and 1st May, 1979, respectively.

Downtime
states that this story took place “some twenty-five years before”, in “1968”.

[
129
]
Downtime

[
130
]
The Web of Fear

[
131
]
The Paradise of Death
. This happened “just before he joined UNIT”.

[
132
]
The Invasion
. UNIT is not set up specifically to fight aliens, but to “investigate the unexplained”. The independent film
Wartime
says that UNIT was formed “during the late 1960s”.

[
133
]
Who Killed Kennedy

[
134
]
Emotional Chemistry

[
135
]
The Dying Days

[
136
]
Island of Death

[
137
]
Bullet Time

[
138
]
The Time Monster
- the Seventh Enabling Act allows the Brigadier to take command of government forces - and
The Green Death.

[
139
] Between
The Web of Fear
and
The Invasion
, although there’s no indication in the TV series as to precisely when
.
In
Spearhead from Space,
the Brigadier tells Liz Shaw that “since UNIT was formed” there have been two alien invasions.
The Web of Fear
took place before UNIT was formed, and so we only saw UNIT fight one set of aliens, in
The Invasion
. It’s here presumed that the Brigadier was simplifying events and referring to the two televised Troughton stories that he appeared in. If not, the Doctor does not seem to have been involved in fending off the other invasion, as he never refers to it. In
Spearhead from Space
and
Terror of the Zygons,
the Brigadier implies that UNIT existed before he was placed in charge of it.

[
140
] “Years” before
Old Soldiers.

[
141
]
The Mind of Evil

[
142
] “Years” before
The Ambassadors of Death.

[
143
]
The Ambassadors of Death

[
144
] “Over twenty years” before
The Dying Days
(so before 1977). This was a Mars Probe mission as seen in
The Ambassadors of Death
.

[
145
] Carrington set off for Mars no later than thirty months before
The Ambassadors of Death
.

Britain’s Missions to Mars

The timeline for the backstory of
The Ambassadors of Death
, and therefore the British space programme, is unclear.

It is a long-term project. Carrington was on Mars Probe 6, and the “missing” ship is Mars Probe 7. Mars Probe 7 takes between seven and eight months to get to Mars (various characters say it takes “seven months”, “seven and half months” and “nearly eight months”), the astronauts spend two weeks on the surface and logically need seven or so months to return to Earth. That’s a round trip of about fifteen months.

Assuming all missions followed that timescale and that only one mission was underway at any one time, then even if each mission was launched the day the previous one returned, this would stretch the Mars programme back eight or nine years. However, not all the Apollo missions were designed to land a man on the moon, so we could reasonably infer that some of the early Mars Probes were shorter test flights. Nowhere, though, is it stated that Carrington was the
first
man on Mars, and
The Dying Days
makes clear that he wasn’t.

Furthermore, when Recovery 7 is lost, we’re told that Recovery 8 isn’t due for service for “three months” - presumably following a schedule that allows it to rendezvous with Mars Probe 8. It seems unlikely that Recovery 8 would be prepped before Mars Probe 8 is launched, and it’s much more plausible that the planners expect Mars Probe 8 to
return
to Earth then. The Mars Probe 8 mission might have been aborted when contact was lost with Mars Probe 7, or it might have continued (as it’s not mentioned, we have no way of knowing). Whatever the case, it suggests that Mars Probe 8 was launched while Mars Probe 7 was underway and at least three months ago, given that it’s now three months away from Earth.

Either way, we know Mars Probe 7 wasn’t launched until Mars Probe 6 returned. So Mars Probe 6 launched at least thirty months before
The Ambassadors of Death
. We know that Dr Taltalian has been working at the Space Centre for “two years”, so the Mars programme has been around at least that long.

The Invasion
states that only America and Russia can launch a moon mission, and
The Ambassadors of Death
is almost certainly set within a year of that. This means one of two things. Either the first Mars Probe was launched after
The Invasion
, or it’s a type of ship that can’t be retasked for a moon mission.

No evidence suggests that the history of space travel in the fifties and sixties in
Doctor Who
differs from the history we know. On the contrary, there’s evidence that it’s the same: Yuri Gagarin is named as the first man in space in
The Seeds of Death
, Ben (from 1966) is from a time before Lunar landings according to
The Tenth Planet
and Richard Lazarus mentions Armstrong in
The Lazarus Experiment
. The moon landing takes place in 1969 according to
Blink
.

[
146
] Dating
Tales from the Vault
(BF CC #6.1) - UNIT has only been in existence “for a few months”, and it’s “about fifty years” before 2011. The Doctor says that in a few months hence, the Bank of England will be printing the notes required for decimalisation.

[
147
] Dating
The Left-Handed Hummingbird
(NA #21) - The UNIT stories are set the year of broadcast. The last time Cristian Alvarez saw the Doctor was “January the thirtieth, 1969” (p8). The TARDIS arrives in that timezone on “December 20, 1968” (p122). “The Happening” takes place on “December 21” (p163).

[
148
]
The Blue Tooth.
The scoutship is clearly reconnoitring Earth in preparation for
The Invasion
.

[
149
] “Six months” before
Spearhead from Space.

[
150
] Dating
The Invasion
(6.3) - It is the near future. According to the Brigadier in this story, the events of
The Web of Fear
“must be four years ago, now”, making it at least 1979. A surveillance photo has the caption “E091/5D/78”, the last two digits of which might (or might not) be the year.

There are advanced, voice-operated computers and “Public Video” videophones. UNIT has an IE computer, and use some IE components in their radios and radar. UNIT has compact TM45 radios with a range of 50 miles, while IE personnel have wrist-communicators. IE has an elaborate electronic security and surveillance system. There are electric cars and hypersonic jets.

There’s no suggestion that this is because IE has been given Cyber-technology - the computer in IE’s reception (which also answers the phones) uses ALGOL and blows up after failing to solve a simple formula, neither of which indicate that a superior alien technology is involved.

There are many communications satellites in orbit, and UNIT has the authority to fire nuclear rockets into space. “Only the Americans and the Russians” have rockets capable of reaching the moon - the Russians are just about to launch a manned orbital survey of the moon, and it would apparently only take “ten hours” to reach it. The IE guards and many UNIT troops wear futuristic uniforms, while Vaughn wears a collarless shirt. The Brigadier’s “anti-feminist” ideas are outdated.

The Doctor jokes that as it’s Britain and there are clouds in the sky, it must be “summertime”.

A casting document written by director Douglas Camfield suggested
The Invasion
was set “about the year 1976 AD”. The
Radio Times
in some regions said that the date was “about the year 1975”, and the continuity announcer echoed this at the beginning of the broadcast of episode one. In
Dalek
, the plaque below the Cybermen head reads “Extraterrestrial Cyborg Specimen, recovered from underground sewer, location London, United Kingdom, date 1975”... almost certainly a reference to this story. However, the Cybermen head is from the wrong era (it’s from
Revenge of the Cybermen
, not
The Invasion
) and the plaque isn’t readable on screen, so there are grounds to discount it. According to
Iceberg
, this story takes place “ten years” (p90) before
The Tenth Planet
(meaning 1976), in “the 70s” (p2).
No Future
suggested “1970”, (p2).
Original Sin
claims that this story was set in “the 1970s” (p281).
Millennial Rites
suggests that the UNIT era took place in “the nineteen eighties” (p15), with
The Invasion
a little over “twenty years ago” (meaning 1979). The 1979 date is repeated in
The Face of the Enemy
(p21).

[
151
]
Iceberg

[
152
]
Millennial Rites

[
153
]
Original Sin

[
154
]
Who Killed Kennedy

[
155
]
No Future

[
156
]
Return of the Living Dad
.
Who’s Who and What’s That
is also mentioned in
The Dying Days
.

[
157
] Mars Probe 7 is launched fifteen and a half months before
The Ambassadors of Death
, and contact was lost “eight months” before
The Ambassadors of Death.

[
158
] Dating
Spearhead from Space
(7.1) - There’s no firm evidence if this is near future or contemporary. The Brigadier tells Liz Shaw here that “in the last decade we have been sending probes deeper and deeper into space”, but that needn’t mean humanity’s first-ever space probe was launched exactly ten years ago.

The Brigadier states in
Planet of the Spiders
that “months” elapsed between
The Invasion
and
Spearhead from Space
(meaning 1979). The weather is “uncommonly warm”, suggesting it is autumn or winter. According to
The Face of the Enemy
(p21) it was “two years” before (meaning 1981). It was “five years ago” in
No Future
(meaning 1971).
Who Killed Kennedy
and
The Scales of Injustice
both state this story takes place in October, which is also the month the story was filmed.